


thought i felt your touch (but the water's rising up)

by Rena



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, ghost!stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:19:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rena/pseuds/Rena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"An exorcism?" Stiles huffs. "Seriously?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	thought i felt your touch (but the water's rising up)

****

Stiles is leaning against the wall at the far end of the room, arms crossed in front his chest and looking incredibly unimpressed as Derek talks to the man in front of him. He’s listening intently to what the priest has to say, and, being Stiles, does a running commentary of the entire conversation that consist mostly of exaggerated eye-rolling and aborted snorts.

The familiarity of it is distracting and it tears him to pieces. Derek forces himself to not look at him.

“Honestly I must say I’m not surprised you came to see me, Mister Hale,” Father Matthew says, looking around. “This house has a history. What happened here....terrible stroke of fate.”

“Yeah,” is all Derek manages to say and thinks it’s kind of ironic that the ghosts of his family members haven’t actually come back to haunt him. The house isn’t the issue.

Instead, the ghost of someone who didn’t even die on these grounds is following him around.  Not that he doesn’t deserve that.

“I am confident that I can help rid you of this inconvenience in no time.”

“Inconvenience?” Stiles parrots, voice tinged with anger.

Derek can feel the spark of irritation coming from him, no more but an echo of what it used to be. Or maybe he’s just hallucinating this part. Dead people don’t have feelings, none that anyone can perceive.

(The dead also don’t linger, and werewolves aren’t real. Except they do, and they are.)

He sees Stiles’ pale figure flicker and then blip out. Before Derek can even blink, he’s by their side, poking his finger at (through) Father Matthew’s chest.

“I’m not an _inconvenience,_ buddy.”

The priest shudders and reels backwards, eyes widening to saucers. “That – was that-“

“Yes.” Derek wonders briefly how the man wants to perform a successful exorcism if he can’t even see ghosts. “Maybe now is not the best time.”

The man is already halfway out of the door when he stops and turns around. “Are you sure it’s safe for you to-“

“I’ll be fine,” Derek tells him curtly.

“An _exorcism_ ,” Stiles huffs once the door has closed behind the priest, as if that’s necessary. “Seriously?”

“Shut up, Stiles.”

“Uh, how about _no_.” Stiles flails his arms. Derek takes a step to the side. It’s not like Stiles can actually hit him, but having an ice cold non-solid arm passing through your chest is not the most pleasurable experience. “You’re trying to get rid of me. You even hired a fucking priest. An incompetent one, but you brought a priest here nonetheless. I feel insulted.”

“You shouldn’t be here, Stiles.”

“What do you mean with ‘here’, though?” Stiles tilts his head. “Do you mean, here as in ‘at your house’, or do you mean ‘dead’, or, you know, ‘not quite so dead’ or”

“Stiles!” Derek pinches his nose and lets himself fall onto the couch.

In the heavy silence that follows, all he can hear is his own laboured breathing and the hard but steady strum of his own heart. The room is too silent, he thinks, without Stiles’ rabbit-fast heartbeat filling it with life.

He thinks maybe Stiles has left him to give Derek some privacy to break down completely or to  quietly bicker about Derek trying to make him disappear, but then he feels the tentative, cool touch of hands wrapping around his own, gently pulling them away from his face. Stiles is kneeling in front of him, biting his lower lip in uncertainty and looking hurt and young, Jesus, so young. It was always so easy to forget that Stiles was still nothing but a kid.

“You know you don’t really want me to leave, right?” Stiles says, but it’s not a rhetorical question, more of a plea, his voice cracking at the end. “Derek, do you want me to go?”

Derek closes his eyes, but he knows from experience that it doesn’t make the world go away. This is just another horrible nightmare he can’t wake up from in the one single huge nightmare that is his life.

“Yes,” he whispers, because he can’t stand to see Stiles every day, can’t live with the guilt and the pain that come with seeing his translucent body flickering in and out of sight, can’t stand being reminded of the way he would throw his head back when he laughed and the way he’d gesticulate and how he’d chew on his pen, in deep concentration, while his eyes flicked over the words on the pages. It’s worse than having only a gravestone to remember him by, because it reminds him, every living second, of what he’s lost.

Stiles looks stricken. He swallows and sits back on his heels, letting his hands fall away.

“No,” Derek says and buries his head in his hands again. “No, I don’t want you to go.”

“Okay.” Stiles sounds cautious. Like someone approaching a raging animal.

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t kill me, Derek,” Stiles sighs. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes it was. Which is why you’re here.”

“You are so infuriating. And dumb. Infuriatingly dumb. Which, I guess, is why I keep hanging around.”

Stiles moves to plonk down next to Derek, bumping their shoulders against each other. Derek shivers. The touch is freezing cold. It’s punishment and absolution, a blessing and a curse.

It’s better than nothing, and nothing less than he deserves.

 


End file.
